Rohn and Nikolai Buser may have the world's best job. The brothers help train 20 puppies a year at the Happy Trails Kennel in Big Lake, Alaska.
"We don't have to do it. We like to," says Nikolai, 8. The puppies grow up to run in the Iditarod, a yearly 1,100-mile dogsled race from Anchorage to Nome, Alaska. The March 1 competition follows the 1925 path of dog teams that raced to bring medicine to sick kids in Nome.
The brothers' dad Martin Buser is a professional musher (dogsled racer) who has won the Iditarod twice. He even named Rohn and Nikolai after stops on the Iditarod Trail. Buser wants the dogs born at his 80-dog kennel to have plenty of love when they are small. He knows the human touch will make them better sled dogs.
While the pups are tiny, the boys pet and cuddle them a lot. "That's what makes them really used to people," says Rohn, 7. He and his brother watch videos with snoozing puppies tucked inside their shirts.
Nikolai and Rohn run around with the puppies for hours every day. They gently rub each dog's feet to get it used to having its feet examined for injuries in a race. They go out on training runs, tying a small dogsled behind their dad's full-size one. The puppies start training with a sled when they're about 9 months old.
Which pup is the very best? "We don't really have favorite puppies," says Nikolai. "We like them all."